© Copyright Cupideros, Tuesday, February 4, 2016

BOOK 3, CHAPTER 3

Glen ducked a second spear. He rammed his shoulder into the cannibal and knocked him to the ground. Turning swiftly and swinging his spear outward, he blocked the spear toss of the fourth cannibal, then held his spear and ran it through him. One down, Glen counted.

GOD said, good job, son, but no boasting. You’ve got your work cut out for you.

The second cannibal came from behind and jumped on Glen’s back, but Glen folded himself small, and the cannibal slipped off to the ground. Without hesitation, Glen stabbed him in the gut. “You won’t have my head shrunk anytime soon.”

The third cannibal tossed his spear, and Muriel raised her black violin case in front of her face. The neck of the violin case held the spear fast. Vibrations from her violin sang a low tone, but the vibrations of the cannibal’s lance sang higher. Her blue eyes widened as she saw the arrow shaking back and forth. In the books of romantic adventure, the woman always screamed, but Muriel refused. I’ll save my screams for my unexpected, horrible visions.

Feeling zealous and at the zenith of his power, the cannibal’s black eyes widened for a second round. Muriel twisted to the side and, using both her slender arms, threw her violin at him, confusing her enemy.

Cacophonous music sprang from the violin case. The cannibal stared at the dropped violin for a second. This must be the music box Shaman Omaokiq wanted unharmed. At the same time, the youthful cannibal’s muscles flinched in the instinctive realization that Mu-ri-el had returned his weapon to him. Maybe she wanted to die a quick death.

He said, “I’ll help you die quick,” in Patlkiq language. He struggled to free his spear. His piercing scream cut through the air. Outraged, he placed one naked red, dusty, sandy foot on the violin case’s base and wrenched it out.

GOD watched. Daughter, you don’t wait until the last minute during defense. We have to work on that.

Horrified for her violin, watching the violin case yield up the dangerous spear, Muriel realized she had her pistol. Keeping her eyes on the furious cannibal, Muriel skimmed inside her black shoulder purse in a flurry for her pistol.

As the powerful cannibal quick-stepped in for the kill, charging her, Glen looked back. “Muriel!”

Muriel pointed her white marble-handled gun. “I come in peace.”

The cannibal’s black, stringy hair flayed about his red face. His feet dug into the white sand behind him in his charge. He moved close enough so they smelled one another.

Muriel gritted out, “Don’t come any closer.”

GOD said, For MY sake, daughter, shoot. I made plans for you and Glen. Don’t wait for peace talks. Shoot!

Muriel narrowed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. The charging cannibal kept coming. He shouted, “For Quetzahacon—” The cannibal halted in his tracks. He stared in disbelief. He fell forward, dead.

Muriel jumped aside out of his way at the last second. Muriel lectured the fallen cannibal: “I did right in surviving. It is not my fault that the men on the Valiant thought they were animals, living out some sick Darwinian-Russel survival of the vilest. Somehow, with GOD’s help, I will survive this!”

The other cannibals, still alive, upon seeing that one of them had fallen by a mere woman, ran back to their canoes. One uninjured and one injured, the cannibals tried to push off.

Glen shouted, “We need that craft to escape from the island!” He ran and splashed into the water after the cannibals. Glen grabbed the side of the boat, only to feel himself dragged into deeper and deeper water. The cannibals rowed furiously. Then one banged and hit Glen upon the head, back, and shoulders. He kept delivering blows, hard and powerful, to Glen’s upper body and hands.

Muriel shouted, “Glen! Let go! For GOD’s sake, let them go! I didn’t fight for my honor for you to die in the Pacific!”

***

Glen’s body sailed along smoothly as if he were trying to stop a yacht race in the Thames River back home. His efforts proved useless.

Unable to make the odd-built canoe tarry, Glen determined to hold on. If he could pull one of them out of the canoe, cutting their speed—just one of them was all he needed to do. He was a man of keen action on land, on the firm ground like a ship’s flooring. But this was the sea—formless, its floor hundreds of feet down in the depths. His feet wiggled helplessly. Only his upper body strength and his mind, soul, and heart provided any advantage. He clung to the vessel. He ignored their angry faces—first scared, then angry, now even furious—staring at him.

Why didn’t he just let go? He needed their craft to get off Makta Island, to survive, to reach Bonin. Glen yelled in pain as the first oar blows struck his hands. Then one blow rattled his brain. Another blow from the side hit his right eye. Glen blinked. Saltwater splashed into the wound, reawakening him to his struggle. The canoe progressed dangerously farther and farther from the white sand of Makta Beach.

The cannibal pounded on Glen’s head like an inexperienced child handed a xylophone. Gleeful and strong strokes landed on Glen’s shoulders and back. His neck and the top of his head received fresh blows. The rowing cannibal yelled in Patlkiq, “You are strong in your GOD’s belief but fatalistic. You want death?”

Glen, GOD said, why are you so reckless? I have your transportation off the island back on Makta. Let go, my son. I have plans for you and Muriel. You will preach the Gospel in America.

Makta Island sensed the departure of one of her visitors. Well, he was reckless anyway. The woman plays music. She is harmonious. She can even have young with the Patlkiq man—the King. You and the King can bring many new voices and sounds to my humble abode. And I shall care for you.

Glen looked back and saw Muriel disappearing. Worse, Glen saw his vision coming and going in flashes of light and dark. He let go after a crashing crunch to his wedding finger. Glen Norman, the preacher, slipped into the warm waters of the Pacific. He rolled face down, but something jerked him right side up, and he gazed at the peaceful view. Deep inside him, he wrestled hard, putting down the thought that it was all over. GOD didn’t bring me out here to die. It was not a mistake to save Muriel’s honor. O GOD, I did right. I protected the helpless.

Swimming was out of the question. He had no strength. Out of his left ear, a swoosh movement caught his attention. He turned as far as his pained neck allowed him before the pain came back like darts.

A dolphin. A pod of dolphins swam by, out from him, in between him and the rowing, disappearing cannibals. Glen smiled.

Struggling to stay conscious, he remembered what a Philippine native had told him: “If you are lost at sea, float on your back. If GOD is with you,” the old Philippine fisherman had said, “you will float back to shore with the tide.” Glen stretched out his legs and arms. He tried to flatten his back like the floor of a ship, best he could. His back arched, and water rose to his neck—but he floated.

His eyes blinked. One eye began to shut, and then Glen floated. He floated for a long time. He didn’t know whether he was dead or alive, but the entire scene darkened slowly, bit by bit, as if someone—GOD—was dimming the lights. A piece of beautiful music began playing. “No. Not now.” Glen hated that music, but it pulled him somehow closer and closer. He struggled to stay afloat and blacked out, only to have the music bring him back to consciousness. It was beautiful, after all. Yes. His dad had loved to play that piece. They had argued about it. He remembered leaving home to become a preacher, and his businessman dad had warned him: “You won’t amount to anything following religion. You will find yourself telling lies and begging for charity.” Beethoven was Glen’s dad’s favorite piece of music. Now that music was going to be the last thing Glen heard on Earth.

But even if so, Muriel played music. Ms. Lennox. Flashes of the beautiful young Aussie making fire stirred something deep inside Glen. He wanted her. He loved her. Ms. Lennox, the refined virgin prodigy musician. Oh, her slender form and soft breasts. He smiled and floated on his back. She played music, Ms. Lennox. It would be nice to see her again and not go down like a sunken ship. He relaxed and put the past behind him.

***

Muriel watched him grow smaller and smaller as the canoe rowed out to the horizon. Finally, she saw Glen drop off. The cannibals picked up speed with a splash and rowed away.

“Glen! Glen!” Muriel wanted to do something about it. But she had never learned to swim. “Glen . . . Glen!” Muriel dropped to her knees and prayed. “GOD, this can’t be the end. This is not the end YOU showed YOUR prophetess. Help Glen to make it back to shore. Blow the tide inward. Please, GOD! I can live on the island alone if I must, GOD. But YOU gave us a helpmate for a reason! GOD! Do something!”

Muriel waited as the sun began to go down over Makta Island. She went back and got her violin. She decided: Glen needed directions back to shore. She opened her violin case. “Even if you’re unconscious or knocked silly, your soul can hear this music, Glen. Your soul can guide you to me, to safety. Listen, Glen.”

Muriel opened her violin case, horrified to see how close the cannibal spears had come to piercing the pinewood. One scratch in the pinewood near the base showed how close her music career had almost ended as well. Sand had entered through the spear holes when she dropped the black case to shoot the cannibal. Turning her instrument upside down and sideways, Muriel shook hard in all directions. She carefully looked at the strings. Everything else seemed fine. This had to work.

On the surface, the turquoise water showed little but the crests of small waves, waves luckily lapping toward the shoreline. But Muriel didn’t know how long that would last.

She started playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony because most people have heard of it. No one ever said, “I’ve never heard of Mozart or Beethoven.” And most people preferred Mozart to Beethoven. Beethoven’s Fifth always followed a close second. Why play some unheard-of musician when Glen’s life hung uncertain in the balance? Once again, she found herself playing to free someone from death—this time, the heroism of the physical body and not death by starvation.

She didn’t care if a hundred partridges gathered around her or any other creatures, as long as the one man she loved, Glen Norman, listened and followed. “Glen, listen,” she muttered as she played. “Glen? Glen?”

GOD said, it is working, daughter. Keep playing. Play it accurately. Build his strength.

Muriel played as accurately as possible. It is the rhythm of Beethoven’s Fifth. That will bring him home—the powerful beat—the need for completion.

Her music spanned outward in all directions. Muriel’s chin warbled under the vibrations of her violin. Her arm danced the bow across the river of strings. Muriel’s heart beat fast. She loved Glen, and Glen loved her. He was too stubborn to admit it, though. He had conflicts with his preacher role and love, but she’d figure all that out later once she had him in her grasp again. He had worked so hard to save her. He deserved life, her protector. This was the second time he had preserved her very being before GOD, the Creator, who sees all things.

As she neared the end, tears came into Muriel’s wide blue eyes.

Tears hung on the long eyelashes of her pretty face, staring blankly at the water. “Glen?” she muttered to herself as the piercing vibrations of high and low notes carried across the ocean waves. The sun retired to the other side of Makta Island, where the fruit was.

Hunger beckoned. But Muriel fought it. Muriel denied her body’s needs. “I don’t worship Glen. I want Glen. Glen . . . Glen, where are you?”

Muriel played Beethoven’s Fifth twice through. Finally, she stopped playing. Dropping to her knees, she bowed her head.

Darkness fell dispassionately. Muriel turned her eyes upward toward the sky. “This isn’t how it was supposed to happen, GOD!” she cried. “I’m a false prophetess!” Tears filled her eyes, and she fell backward on the white sands of Makta Island, convinced she would be alone. She would make the fire alone. No need to worry about an audience watching her make the fire. She would hunt, kill, and survive alone until some ship came. “GOD, send a ship of righteous sailors and not lecherous ones. Send men who respect YOUR laws before they listen to the laws of men.”